Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach | Art by Nathaniel Himawan

One of the first blocks that came out when I started playing Magic was Time Spiral, with Timeshifted cards from the past in the namesake set, color-shifted cards from present memory in Planar Chaos, and glimpses into the future in, well, Future Sight.

Reality Fracture as a set shows a similarly seminal event and the ripples it has, with alternate histories and even…color-shifted cards?

There’s one such example of this, which is garnering considerable attention because of the importance of its predecessor and namesake: Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach.

But is it a new staple? And will it change the way the eponymous Sphinx Typal is built forever? As the resident EDHREC Typal master, I'm here to do a bit of analysis.

What Does Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach Do?

Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach is a three-mana instant for that draws two cards. On its own, that’s a slightly worse Quick StudyQuick Study. Then there’s the beautiful little bit of text: a deck can have any number of cards named Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach. But where does the Typal part come in?

Well, when the spell resolves, if you have four copies of Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach in your grave, you can exile those four and search for a Sphinx to put onto the battlefield from your library. But is any of this worth it?

Spellslinger decks do sometimes struggle to find enough draw spells, especially storm-oriented ones, but three mana to draw two cards isn’t a good enough rate to be worth including. There are a number of cards that work with having any number of cards of a given name, like Locket of YesterdaysLocket of Yesterdays and Thrumming StoneThrumming Stone. They already have a decent price tag because of the power of breaking a cardinal deckbuilding rule and because the sets they came from, Coldsnap and Time Spiral, were before the modern printing model.

A Typal analysis of Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach is less about drawing cards and more about the payoff: for the card to be good, the cards it tutors up need to be worth having so many mediocre to bad draw spells. But how have similar cards fared?

What Other Cards Do What Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach Does?

Dragon's ApproachDragon's Approach is a decently powerful card, and is popular enough to be in 13.7K decks on EDHREC.

It’s a sorcery with only one red pip, deals three damage to each opponent, and searches for a Dragon, but also can have any number of copies. As a result, the comparisons are fairly close, but three damage is likely better than drawing two cards, one pip is less limiting than two, and Dragons tend to be more powerful than Sphinxes.

Within blue, we have another Typal connection: Persistent PetitionersPersistent Petitioners cares about Advisors.

Petitioners are in almost as many decks as Dragon's ApproachDragon's Approach, at 12.3K decks on EDHREC. Like both Approaches, the Petitioners require four of something to get turbo-charged, going from milling one card apiece to twelve cards together. It is a creature, which is both better and worse than an instant or a sorcery. It is able to present as a blocker and it doesn’t require copies of itself, only Advisors in general.

While it is certainly powerful to have the payoff built in, its debatable as to whether that payoff is better than either Approach.

Pros of Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach

No matter how weak the individual effect is, cards that can have any number of copies in a deck are going to appeal to Commander players, and for good reason. Breaking a cardinal deckbuilding rule enables strategies to have a degree of consistency other types can only dream of. While drawing two cards might not be better than dealing three damage to each opponent or having a 1/3 blocker, drawing the cards can help us find more copies of Approach.

This makes getting to four copies in the grave to find the Sphinx faster and more consistent. This means, however, that evaluating the card is largely contingent on what Sphinxes we are able to find.

Cons of Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach

The double blue pips are somewhat prohibitive to Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach’s success, as it makes casting multiple copies in a turn difficult and makes it tough to run in a multicolor deck. Furthermore, while drawing cards can help find more Sphinx's Approaches, it can also find…Sphinxes.

Why is this a problem?

Well, the more Sphinxes we draw, the fewer are in the library to search out once we get our setup. As a result, we run the risk of stranding our bigger Sphinxes in hand, putting an odd vise on the card’s playability.

So where does Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach fit?

Which Commanders Want Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach?

The primary landing spot seems to be Unesh, Criosphinx SovereignUnesh, Criosphinx Sovereign, a monoblue Sphinx commander. It reduces the cost of Sphinxes, which helps to mitigate the downside of extra copies of Approach being stuck in our hand.

It also does a Fact or FictionFact or Fiction impression when a Sphinx enters the battlefield, importantly not caring about casting, so we can trigger it with the Sphinxes we search out with Approach. It’s even mono-blue, which helps make sure we have enough blue mana to chain Approaches.

The downside of being mono-blue, though, is that there are limited options.

Is there a Sphinx with more colors that could work?

Yennett is another solid Sphinx option, this time adding black and white to triple our options. It also lets us cast odd-mana spells for free off the top of our library. And guess what the three-mana Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach is!

We’re already cheating big Sphinxes into play, so if we make them odd mana values, we can have two different Sphinx cheaters! The problem is that, as a three-color commander, getting multiple instances of two blue pips to chain Approaches is difficult. And limiting ourselves to odd mana value Sphinxes undoes some of the benefits of being multicolor, as we’re reducing our options again.

While there are other Sphinx commanders, the last really solid option is Arjun, the Shifting FlameArjun, the Shifting Flame.

Arjun walks (or flies) the middle ground, being a two-color commander in Izzet colors, so it can easily cast multiple Approaches and has more than just blue options. Red isn’t the best accompaniment color for Sphinxes, but it does have a lot of instant and sorcery support, which can help flesh the deck out.

What Arjun does that the deck can really use is that it puts the cards in our hand on the bottom of our library when we cast a spell, and then we draw that many cards. Ordinarily, this is a downside, as we can’t predict what our turn will be like. When a huge chunk of our library is Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approaches, however, we know we’re going to keep drawing them.

Tucking the hand helps make sure we maintain Sphinxes to tutor, and the Approaches draw cards which increases our hand size when we tuck our hand. Adding a color and having an ability that synergizes with Approaches makes Arjun the surprising best home for Approach.

Conclusion

Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach is an intriguing card, and I am definitely a fan. 

I’ve written about a commander that can have multiple copies here, and these cards create an interesting minigame of trying to figure out how many copies of the signature spell you need to play, and how many other cards you need to run for it to function. And Sphinx's ApproachSphinx's Approach, like its Draconic predecessor, is a tutor, so we need to build with the toolbox element in mind.

Verdict: a really fun deckbuilding challenge that will change how Sphinx decks are built going forward.

But what are your thoughts on it? And what decks are you looking to slot it into?